Friday, August 6, 2010

Hiroshima: August 6, 1945

Today is the 65th anniversary of the dropping of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima. The uranium for the Bomb was processed in Oak Ridge, my boyhood home. Although the decision to drop the bomb was controversial, once it is viewed in the wider context of World War II, it does not appear to be extraordinarily reprehensible., as some have claimed. First, the total deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were probably not greater than the total number of deaths which occurred during the Japanese Rape of Nanking. I am not pointing to the Nanking Massacre to justify the Hiroshima Bomb use, put to indicate a context in which Hiroshima should be judged. There is little doubt that an extraordinary war crime took place in Nanking during November and December of 1937. This crime involved the deliberate rampage of tens of thousands of Japanese troops during which hundreds of thousands of captured soldures and Chinese civilians in the City of Nanking were murdered, and at least 20,000 women were raped.

Evaluations of the Hiroshima bombing should be weighed against evasions of the Nanking Massacre. Whatever we think of Hiroshima, we should not paint it as a morally more reprehensible event than Nanking.

War makes for very bad choices. The decision by one nation to kill the citizens or representatives of another country would be totally reprehensible in most circumstances other than war. War itself is a cause of moral discomfort even among people who conclude that at least some wars can be morally justified. It is not my purpose here to discuss the justification of war, but to point to the fact that war is at best a moral gray area, and virtually any act of war is morally unjustified by an absolute standard of right and wrong, yet war is a moral reality, and our theory of morality must accept this fact.

An act of war, no matter how horrible, may be justified, if all of the alternatives are worse. The Nanking massacre was clearly a war crime, because the Japanese had better alternatives. The moral issue for Hiroshima and Nagasaki then is the issue of better alternatives.

The justfication argument was that the Hiroshima bombing, no matter how terrible and deadly it was, saved both Japanese and American lives. The argument against was that the Japanese would have surrended anyway, even if the bombing had not taked place. However, at the time when the Hiroshima Bomb was dropped, the Japanese were attempting to negotiate surrender turms with the United States. The United States had rejected Japanese surrender terms, and the Japanese appearred to be unwilling accept American surrender conditions. American conditiions rested on the beliefe that Japanese political institutions were a fundamental cause of the war, and long term peace between the two countries was only possible if Japanese political institutions were reformed. The Japanese unwillingness to surrender was based on an unwillingness by the Japanese power elite to accept the American mandated reformulation of their political institutions.

From the Viewpoint of the American Government, the Bombing was justified as a means of bringing home to the Japanese political elite that the nation faced distruction if it refused American Surrender terms. Three events influanced the choice by Emporor Hirohito to mandate that his government surrender, and to address the Japanese people on the necessity of surrender. They were the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, and the Russian entry into the war, which occured on August 9, 1945, the same day as the Nagasaki Bombing. From this perspective, the use of the Atomic Bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki appears to have been justified.

(I intend to follow up this post with a discussion of how the Atomic Bomb has influanced perceptions of energy choices.)

"Also thanks to the work of Japanese historians, we now know much more about Japanese plans in the summer of 1945. Japan had no intention of surrendering. It had husbanded over 8,000 aircraft, many of them Kamikazes, hundreds of explosive-packed suicide boats, and over two million well equipped regular soldiers, backed by a huge citizen’s militia. When the Americans landed, the Japanese intended to hit them with everything they had, to impose on them casualties that might break their will."

Saying it appears to be justified is your personal opinion and nothing more.

I am no expert, but I have read that the primary Japanese request in the surrender terms was that the Emperor remain as the titular head of government, to which we actually acceded and that documents of the meetings to decide to surrender were almost entirely focused on the declaration of War on Japan by the Soviet Union.

So, my conclusion is that it was not justified. If you ever do some traveling outside the US, you will find that it is almost universally considered a stain on America's history.

And, bringing up abominable behavior (of which human History is filled) by the Japanese is not justification. Also, since the 'Rape of Nanking' has such a catchy title it should be clear to everyone that it is very well known, and not obscure at all.

SteveK9, Although the Japanese Cabinat had not agreed on surrender terms. The Japanese Government had repeatedly made clear that it could not accept unconditional surrender. HistorianRichard B. Frank stated about Suzuki, Japan's last war time Prime minister, "Although Suzuki might indeed have seen peace as a distant goal, he had no design to achieve it within any immediate time span or on terms acceptable to the Allies. His own comments at the conference of senior statesmen gave no hint that he favored any early cessation of the war ... Suzuki's selections for the most critical cabinet posts were, with one exception, not advocates of peace either." There appear to have been two predominate points of view in the Suzuki government, a pro-surrender minority, and a hold out majority, who favored a final battle, which would cost the United States so much that agree to more favorable to Japan peace terms. The War Journal of the Imperial Headquarters expressed the hold out viewpoint:"We can no longer direct the war with any hope of success. The only course left is for Japan's one hundred million people to sacrifice their lives by charging the enemy to make them lose the will to fight."

Even after the Hirohito intervention, the some in the holdout party still opposed surrender, and attempted a last minute coup.

Hi, I'm the Energy editor at Before It's News. Our site is a People Powered news platform with over 1,000,000 visits a month and growing fast.We would be honored if we could republish your blog RSS feed in our Energy category. Our readers need to read what Nuclear Green has to say.Syndicating to Before It's News is a terrific way spread the word and grow your audience. Many other organizations are using Before It's News to do just that. We can have your feed up and running in 24 hours. I just need you to reply with your permission to do so. Please include the full name and email of the person who will be attached to the account, and let me know the name you want on the account (most people have their name or their blog name).You can also have any text and/or links you wish appended to the end or prepended to the beginning of each of your posts on Before It's News. Just email me the text and links that you want at the beginning and/or ending of each post. If you know html you can send me that. If not, just send me the text and a link to your site. It should be around 200 characters or less (not including links).You can, if you like, create a custom feed for Before It's News that includes multiple links back to your blog or web site. We only require that RSS feeds include full stories, not partial stories. We don't censor or edit work.Thank you,Chris HolehouseEditor, Before It's Newschris.h@beforeitsnews.comwww.beforeitsnews.com